


Beyond Pain

by Turandokht



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Daenerys Targaryen Is Not a Mad Queen, Dorne, Fix-It, Gen, Multi, Naath, Other, Queen Daenerys Targaryen, Sothoryos
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:48:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23344249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turandokht/pseuds/Turandokht
Summary: In Dorne, the people and the houses alike have had a thousand-year journey in Westeros. Now, in the events of ReganX's wonderful "Forewarned", that journey is coming to an end as the Night's King descends through the realms. In Essos the Forewarned Daenerys Targaryen brings peace. Now it is time for the Orphans of the Greenblood and the people of Dorne to face the doom coming down upon them, and for the last of the magic of the old Rhoynar to reveal itself--and its tangled connection to the Dragon, that the peoples of Essos in Westeros, Rhoynar and Valyrians, two cultures which were at once radically different and still in some ways linked, could never quite escape. But this journey into the storm will not be without price.An authorised tie-in to ReganX's Forewarned.
Comments: 36
Kudos: 6





	1. The Deep Desert

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ReganX](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReganX/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Forewarned](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18875461) by [ReganX](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReganX/pseuds/ReganX). 



**Author's personal translation:**  
O salty sea, the measure of your salt  
Are the tears of Portugal!  
For the price of our passage,  
how many mothers wept,  
How many prayers in vain were said!  
How many maidens unwed remaineth  
So that by you should we triumph, o sea!

Was it worth it? Everything is worth it  
If there is no pettiness in the soul.  
Those who would pass beyond the Bojador  
Must also pass beyond pain.  
To the sea God gave peril and the abyss  
But in the waves He mirrored Bliss.  
**\-- MAR PORTUGUÊS – PESSOA.**

Lord Harmen Uller was a man of sand-blasted, dark skin of the desert, and hair of gray with a beard the same, which waved in the wind. His brother, five years younger, did not yet show his age nearly so much. When Ellaria had seized the throne, they had taken caution to keep themselves at a distance. Though her rule was tenuous and by power and by her daughters being the closest relatives of the Nymeros-Martell, it would only grow more tenuous if the Uller were closely linked to the Sunspear Throne.

It was said, since ancient times, that half the Ullers were Mad, and half of them were worse. On the inside, the Ullers themselves knew better. But since their line had been borne of Rhoynish and Westerosi blood, since the days of Nymeria’s great conquest, the line had certainly kept a secret. Over the centuries which had past subsequent to those momentous days of old, they had added a few more secrets to the first.

When Ellaria had made her flight from Sunspear with the Dornish fleet and every merchant she could muster, they might have followed her, except for the letter they got, embossed with gold and written in red ink. Harmen had read it with a flare of anger, for the woman who wrote it was not the Lord Uller, and her presumption was great. But without her line, the Uller would not exist, nor would they have their greatest triumph, and nor would they have their greatest secret. They would not have survived the Dragon’s Wroth as it was, which had claimed four Lords Uller in revenge for Rhaenys Targaryen’s death.

Boiling out of the wavering white sun of the desert to the east--toward the headwaters of the Southern Vaith, lost in the sands--came a caravan toward Hellholt, for which both men waited. Steadily now the caravan came into view, and it did not stop, growing and growing. Harmen estimated that it had about five thousand people in it; this was much more than Lifewater had, which meant his cousin was collecting villagers and herdsmen as she approached.

“Seven, but she thinks it time,” Ulwyk remarked at his side. “The letters from King’s Landing...”

“Were real,” Harmen agreed. He saw one figure, swathed in white khadi robes and green shawls, riding astride a mule with a slight figure—another woman—riding on each side of her on horses, twirling their swords and dancing with them to the entertainment of the whole mass, as well as the servants, the freemen and retainers. Soon enough she was before them, leading the whole of the caravan which approached Hellholt, where the people had assembled. She had a fly-whisk that she prodded her mule along with, though a plain scabbard of a straight sword was buckled at her side.

Nimbly, she leapt down, and approached them, her mule handed off to one of her guards who dismounted in a smooth motion. “Fairly well met, cousin,” she waved with a delicate gloved hand. Her skin was shrouded against the sun and sand, like she had never been under the desert light before, and her second guard caught up with her and unfolded a parasol to shade her.

“Lady Jeyanka,” Harmen acknowledged. There was just a twinge of fear, as it had always been the dozen or so times that he had met her. She did not show her age, in the slightest, being youthful and full of delicate vigour. But under the shawl, both of her kinsmen could see that one of her eyes was as black as their own, and the other one, set into skin of fine mahogany, and absolutely classical Rhoynar features, was violet.

“Thank you. Is Hellholt evacuated?” She knew the answer, but nonetheless she asked.

“Jeyanka,” Harmen gestured behind him. “The dead, if they come, will have the flesh ripped from their bodies by...”

“So, no. It’s not. Why else would I come?”

“If we fear an Army of the Dead,” Ulwyk threw his hands open and stared at her incredulous, “why would you leave Lifewater, and take the people with you, and thereby possibly risk its uncovering?”

“As if I could keep the Great Other from finding Lifewater,” she laughed, bitterly. “So, no, you haven’t evacuated it yet. Well, the people of my caravan will help you start, and then the day after tomorrow, we will pull down the halls. They’re coming. And, I might add, the time is right.” she strolled through the gates, and when she did, she skipped a coin into the fountain which brought cool water to the lemon-orchard within Hellholt’s walls. “We need time to get ready. I’ve already sent word.”

“To the orphans.” Harmen shook his head. “They haven’t sailed the open sea in centuries, Jeyanka, and the storms have rendered the coast all but uninhabitable. The capes see only the dead ruins of ships upon them, driven down from the North.”

“Do you trust your cousin so little? Do you account the Castella of the Holdfast of the House so weak?” She didn’t look directly at them, but instead stood, staring contemplatively at the fountain.

“You’re not in your Holdfast. You have abandoned it, and turned to your Orphans, and away from our religion,” the younger brother growled, feeling tempestuous. “It was one thing for little Ellaria to run away and leave our realm in chaos, one thing for the Dragon to decide not to return. But you would have us abandon our halls without a fight. Destroy them before the enemy has seen them.”

“Your religion, Ulwyk,” she shook her head. “Your halls. You could fight, sure. The desert would scour them, sure. Until it turned to snow.” Almost as if to illustrate her words, there was a crackling of thunder in the distance. “It’s been raining at Yronwood for a week, we’re next. It’s a cold rain, like this land has not seen before, that comes from the north. The same with your storm-ravaged capes north of Sunspear. The passes of the Red Mountains are already so choked with snow that none could flee south if they wanted to. They do want to, but they can’t flee,” she smiled, and turned to them with a dark grin. “The signs are all around us, and you know it. It’s time. Come back to Mother.”

Harmen knew that his kinswoman was not referring to The Mother, as the Dornish, despite their toleration of customs and pleasures that the rest of the Seven Kingdoms thought were sins, were actually quite devout, perhaps the most devout in their own way of all the Seven Kingdoms. No, she was referring to another Mother.

Mother Rhoyne.

He tensed, even as he knew that all of her words were true. The signs in the weather were manifest.

“She has always sustained us, because she is more concerned with what this line holds within its blood, than in our obedience to the edicts of the Nymeros,” Jeyanka observed, continuing without prompting or riposte, mocking the orders of long-lost Martells that they integrate. “Forget your God, Forget your Tongue, Forget your Books, that’s what we were told to do. But my foremothers remembered their Mother God, remembered their Tongue, and remembered their Books. She’s calling us home, my kinsmen. She’s calling us home.”

“And you...” Ulwyk stuttered, but it was cut off almost immediately.

Jeyanka laughed, and snapped her left hand in the air. The water exploded out of the fountain, and flew through the air, to splash across Harmen and Ulwyk and their sworn shields. The droplets which flew through the air toward Jeyanka paused, spinning in place, and forming a wall, which she allowed to fall back into the fountain. “Since the Dragon called forth her children from stone, my power waxes too,” she was laughing at her wet kinsmen, while screams and mutters of fear from the smallfolk from Hellholt were contrasted with a bowing reverence of the smallfolk of Lifewater.

Jeyanka drew herself up, and with a booted foot braced on the side, stood atop the rim of the fountain so that she stood above her kinsmen. “Don’t deny it. That is the power which preserved us. That is the power that consumed Harlen Tyrell when the rains of the desert descended to give my namesake and foremother power in the wadi at the head of the canyon to Lifewater. That is how she made an Army vanish with a host of a thousand. Not with sun and sand; with a torrent of water that arrived into the midst of an Army on the advance. With the highest stream of the Greenblood in full flood, she could do anything. And though I am not my namesake, I will get us across the Sea. Pull Down Your Halls! I have need of the bracing timbers for the keels of ships. We are all going to Planky Town, and there, we will make river-barges back into sailing ships. There is a season to all things, and Nymeria’s line is at an end. Her blood and her glory will live on in us as it does in the Sands, but the line is gone, the Prince is gone across the sea. It’s a sign. The old prohibitions no longer apply. If you wish to live,” she hopped down and strode forward to stand in Harmen’s face, “then you will sail across the sea.”

“I know of your magic, I have no doubt it is real,” Harmen answered plainly. “But the sea is too rough,” he hissed, “and you have no power over salt water, only fresh. And if we were to reach the Rhoyne, we would find ourselves bedeviled by the Dothraki and enslaved by the Volantenes.”

“I have some power in the sea,” she answered defiantly, “and it will grow the more that the Power draws south. I will take us to sea. Everyone of Dorne I will take with us. And the Dragon will keep the Dothraki from coming against us. The Alliance our ancestors forged will stand.”

“And you think that, when you bear the sword of Her Ancestress, and make charms of her Ancestress’ Dragon’s bones?”

“It’s time for Valyrians and Rhoynar to stop fighting, there aren’t enough of us left to quarrel anymore,” Jeyanka answered immodestly. “Yes, I will be at peace with her, because I have something to give her.” The caravan had, through the commotion, finished arriving.

The two men turned, and stared, and started. On a great wagon, a team of twelve oxen drew a massive, heavy sarcophagus.

“I will give her Rhaenys Targaryen to bury.” She paused, and she let the words settle, she let them hang, as she stood, imperious, and indeed maybe half-mad, before her kin, before the halls whose destruction she demanded. Some of her servants already eyed the lemon trees as if they would take them down, like any wood, no matter how small, would be gathered. But for the Lords and the Water Witch, there was only the sarcophagus.

Harmen slowly shook his head. “If we get across the sea, Jeyanka. If.”

“I do not promise you it will be easy,” she answered, and now took another step close, until her breath was hot on his cheek, and her shawl brushed against him. “To escape this curse, we must go south before east. To escape Westeros, to return to the Rhoyne, we must first sail beyond pain.”

“Us and the orphans?” Ulwyk asked, unable to tear his eyes away from the sarcophagus.

“Us and the orphans… And our bannermen, our retainers and servants and freemen and all of their families… And the houses and the smallfolk of every other Lordship in all of Dorne who will come, the Sand, the Salt, the Stone, all who can reach us in time. We will strip and fell every tree, we will break Planky Town down to the planks, and we will make ships of them all. We will make ships until the last moment, and when the strength of the enemy is neigh upon us, in the furthest east of the furthest south, we will cast aside the land which Nymeria gave us, and we will sail south. What I promise, kinsmen, is exactly what I said: A journey beyond pain. Do you think the Dragon Queen would have stayed in Essos if she had not known the truth of what now comes down against us? Do you think that Ellaria would have fled without it? Was she ever a coward, or did she not have the strength to make any woman of the Rhoyne proud? It will happen one way or another, you do not have a choice, merely in whether or not to follow, or whether to wait here and die. But either way, I am taking the family’s retainers with me.”

Ulwyk looked furious at the words, but a subdued Harmen raised his hand in peace. “If you are right,” he acknowledged, “then that is the only decent thing to do. And you are a Water Witch, you could do it, I will not make myself a fool before you.”

“I know I’m right. Unfortunately. I can feel that power. Feed our people, and pull down the Halls. We will not give them to even the dead intact, now will we? We are Ullers.”

Harmen’s face split into a dreadful grin. “Of that, we have no doubt. Gods, cousin, I...”

“Let’s go! We lack nothing!” Jeyanka exclaimed, and rested a hand on the hilt of her sword. "North first, and then we descend to the Greenblood from there, having gathered all the people we can!"

Harmen nodded once. “We’ll go. We lack nothing,” he repeated the words, brandished them like swords, and embraced his cousin’s madness. The only fear in his heart was the promise she gave him that they would sail beyond pain. Those words promised much, more than their simple meaning, and for the people of his charge, he already lamented at what the Witch had seen in the water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original text of the poem:  
> Ó mar salgado, quanto do teu sal  
> São lágrimas de Portugal!  
> Por te cruzarmos, quantas mães choraram,  
> Quantos filhos em vão rezaram!  
> Quantas noivas ficaram por casar  
> Para que fosses nosso, ó mar!  
> Valeu a pena? Tudo vale a pena  
> Se a alma não é pequena.  
> Quem quer passar além do Bojador  
> Tem que passar além da dor.  
> Deus ao mar o perigo e o abismo deu,  
> Mas nele é que espelhou o céu.  
> MAR PORTUGUÊS – PESSOA.


	2. Muddy Waters

Marching north, they avoided trying to advance through the desert to the east, whence Jeyanka had come. The reason for it was that the rains had now begun in earnest, and as they tore through the Wadis and turned the dry arroyos into massive torrents, the desert would be totally impassible. In the rock of the hills which divided the Uller lands from the upper tributaries of the Greenblood, the advance of the host was still tolerably fast despite the rain.

Jeyanka’s only child led the Vanguard. She was a very tall, quite thin and lanky girl in her early twenties, give or take, named Deria, with androgynous features and a reedy voice, who wore armour and a light white cloak over it to keep it cool, which flapped around her shoulders as she rode her sand steed rapidly from point to point, keeping the troops in order.

Harmen had insisted to his cousin that he would lead the main group, mostly civilians, himself. His wife had long predeceased him, but his eldest son Ser Marlyn and his wife, Saera of House Dein, had three children and Ulwyck had two of his own; unless they were all lost at sea, the Uller name was well-secure.

Deria had never been introduced at Hellholt before, and she had only seen it one time, the night before they pulled down the great beams which were now being hauled, slung across two wagons, down the road to the north. Harmen had taken his time eyeing her and decided he didn’t want to ask questions of how Jeyanka raised her family, or what she choices she had made for a husband. But he saw how Jeyanka eyed Marlyn’s youngest daughter.

“You want to teach her, don’t you?” He finally asked as the Water Witch rode in an otherwise companionable silence at his side.

“I do.”

“Let it be one of Deria’s, when she is married, when we reach the Rhoyne,” he answered.

From under her shawl, Jeyanka shot him a sharp look. “She is barren. I need a niece. Or grand-niece, as the case may be.”

“You can take it up with Marlyn when we get to the Rhoyne,” Harmen answered. That at least confirmed what he had thought, cold comfort though it was.

“If both myself and Deria are lost on the voyage, we will need someone to carry on the tradition,” Jeyanka countered. “And I can’t teach in the middle of salt, but on the Greenblood while we build our ships...”

Harmen shrugged, then. “Talk to her father, cousin.”

Jeyanka dipped her head with a rustling and rippling of her shawl, and shifted her horse. She rode up alongside of Marlyn with his fine, full dark beard and oiled ringlets for hair. Like most of the others he was not in armour, only the vanguard were, for how hard it was to ride such long distances ready to fight. And hopefully they would not need to fight.

“M’lady cousin,” the heir to House Uller acknowledged.

“Your daughter… Meira.”

“Yes, Lady Jeyanka, that’s so,” he affirmed, and then his eyes gave way to the parental suspicion of a protective father.

“All children should be able to remain innocent,” Jeyanka said as they rode on, the rain starting again when they had not yet dried from the last time it drenched them. She spoke the words gently, and reassuringly enough.

“What would you have with her?” Marlyn finally asked, as his wife came riding up to be at his side. They were over the pass now, maybe this misery wouldn’t last so much longer, but the suspicion was in his eyes.

“I’d like to start teaching her,” Jeyanka answered. “In case all else fails, that there be one of us to carry on the tradition. She’s eight, she can learn enough to perpetuate it. It’s not unheard of, you know...”

“No, it isn’t.” The two halves of the house weren’t really _halves._ The Witch of Lifewater was an Uller woman, and many times a girl had gone to Lifewater when the previous Witch had no daughters. He decided not to ask about Deria. It made sense to have three, in the circumstances. “But what innocence is that?” 

His wife’s face was frozen, and stony, as she caught up on the thread of the conversation. “ Would you take her from me?” 

“No, absolutely not.” Jeyanka stiffened and tipped a hand out into the rain. “The way of things is changing, irrevocably now. There is no need for us to hide. She will stay at your tent, and in time, your home will be her’s, there will be no need for a Water Witch to hide in Lifewater. Not on the Rhoyne.”

“We face wars, dissension and uncertainty,” Saera answered. “If we are to make this journey then at the end it won’t be like the days of old, Lady Jeyanka, you are right. Very well, I bow to the necessity. You are her teacher, but I am her mother.” 

Marlyn looked shocked at his wife’s ready assent, but as looked down the slopes below, he had to take a breath and let the protective instinct of a father slip away for a moment. Everything was uncertain, nothing was written now, except the doom they fled. To be a Water Witch would no longer damn a girl to a life of loneliness in canyon streams that shot through the desert, in the hidden cave-city that Jeyanka had abandoned.

It would just be a part of their living, if they regained the Rhoyne.

If.

“You are her mother, I am her teacher,” Jeyanka repeated graciously, and shifted away as the rains stormed down upon them again.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, the great host of people, from the highest to the lowest, all moving through the unnatural rain in the desert, descended onto the  headwaters of the River Scourge. Such a terrible name, for rough water and uncertain flows which would easily overflow its banks. But it gave life, with the Vaith, to the Greenblood. 

They had marched her for the purpose of beginning their journey downriver. Along the way they had collected the inhabitants of the desert and the barren hills. A ragged host of many, many smallfolk marched around and under the leadership of their Lords. It would have been an impressive sight were it not for what it portended. Instead it was a dreadful sight, the promise of the end of days, of the rout of humanity.

It had stopped raining again by the time that they reached the Scourge. The desert was choked with water, however. A muddy creek, clouded with yellow silt and choked with the detritus of the hills, flowed perhaps a foot deep in front of them, with a ridge beyond, and the Scourge to their right. Trees grew here, where there was enough water flowing down from the tops of the hills to fill the Scourge. Cottonwoods and other trees of the desert riparian margin, they were surrounded by swatch-grass.

Up on the low ridge behind them, in the trees and in the grass, the Uller vanguard could clearly make out the banners of Yronwoods and Daynes present in force. Not civilians, but troops, armed for conflict. Deria Uller reined in her horse and let out an audible sigh, gloved hands pressing into the horn of her saddle as she eased up from the elaborate layers of padding on her saddle.

“They’re preparing for a Battle,” Hellholt’s old Castellan, who everyone just called Crooked Nose, remarked coldly to the lean, lanky daughter of the Water Witch, and cast a sharp on her, expectant and a bit dismissive, a question lurking in his dark eyes above that grand mustache. _How will you handle it, really?_ But he certainly didn’t voice it, even if it was clear in his eyes; he was a man of few words. 

“Turn the men out in battles,” Deria answered, shaking water off of her cloak. “But form a line of the lead wagons first, right in the centre, for us to rally behind and break up any charge of their horse.” 

“By the Gods,” Crooked Nose answered, and made the seven-pointed star as he rode forward. “Come on now! A wall of wagons, push them into line and release the oxen. Form by battle, colours to the front, Marto on the left, Rinhart to the right, standard-bearers for Hellholt around me!”

D eria closed her eyes for a moment, and then they snapped open again to shade her face below her plumed helm, and look sharply across the muddy yellow creek to the trees beyond. The Dayne and Yronwoods and whomever else was with them were starting to move forward, forming up in their own battles after coming out from the trees and plunging their horses down the worn-smooth paths to the bottoms for the normally dry creek, where dusty yellow loess would normally blow were it not all turned to mud. 

_ I can’t let this turn into a battle.  _ But nor could she risk the people in the convoy to being unready. She had hoped that the men in the trees would wait, but instead they were coming forward as her troops deployed. So she leaned back and gestured sharply to one of her Uncle’s squires, riding a courser. “Quickly now, a truce flag, and come up along me—and you there, herald, with your trumpet, too!” 

With a truce flag on her right and a herald blowing his trumpet on the left to draw attention to it, she led her way around the carts still being formed up, and splashed her dun sand steed through the muddy waters of the creek. “I would treat with you!” She called out. “ _ I would treat with you!”  _

Her ride up finally brought a knot of men forward. It was Lord Anders Yronwood, the Bloodroyal, with his son Cletus and Gerold Dayne—Darkstar--riding alongside the uncomfortable Lord Edric. The four men, with heralds and men-at-arms bearing flags of truce, made an impressive sight in comparison to the reedy Deria with her herald and a single squire. Deria grimaced at the thought, and reminded herself what her mother had taught her about the customs of the Rhoyne. Ultimately, they were all of Rhoynish blood, and it should count for something—though in the case of the Yronwood and the Daynes, it likely counted for much less. In comparison with the Ullers in Hellholt, they were much  _ less  _ Rhoynish. 

“M’Lords, I am Lady Deria Uller, commander of the vanguard for the people of Hellholt, of the Brimstone, of the Red Waste. We have come to the Greenblood to follow her home, we don’t mean to fight, you are welcome to join us.” 

Deria, unlike her mother, had  _ two  _ violet eyes. 

“Y’look like a boy who misplaced yer prick,” Darkstar smirked, “And yer Witch of a mother whored herself to a Lysene sailor and decided to pretend you aren’t a Sand.” The affected accent made a few of the men burst into sneering laughter.

A hot colour of a flush rose in Deria’s cheeks. A bemused look crossed Darkstar’s face in return, though Lord Anders was glaring fiercely at him for it. 

“I will give that no dignity, Ser,” Deria answered as she set her jaw, and looked sharp to Lord Anders. “Are we really going to fight when we face a threat beyond any Man or Beast?” 

“If you were coming to form an Army to defend Dorne in the passes or along the line of march of the Boneway, I would welcome you to the bread and salt of Yronwood. We could hold a Great Council to elect a new Prince,” Lord Anders answered, “and face the enemy united, as Dornish. We would even be glad to ignore your Mother’s impious witchcraft were it to be put to use against these enemies of Northern legend.” 

_You would be that Prince, you think. Bloodroyal, indeed. _ Deria hid the sniff. “ We send you messages offering you a place of honour in the fleet, and you come under arms instead?” 

“A _thousand years!”_ Lord Anders exclaimed. “We have been here for a _thousand years._ This is our land, we have bled for it, the line of my family extends for a thousand years more past Nymeria, and then still further! We have held our halls since the days of men were young. And you’d throw it all away to take us back to the Rhoyne, for what? For ruined cities of greyscale and Volantene chains, that’s what! Our armies are untouched, we are untouched by war. And you want us to throw away our Maesters, our Septons, the Seven Pointed Star, and follow _you?_ Follow _your Mother?_ To follow Harmen Uller’s mad aunt who lives in ruins in the desert and only comes out to speak in riddles? To what? So she can be our new High Septon, but to make us all worship turtles?” 

D eria’s horse pranced with nervous energy, forcing her to steady the reins. She looked over the group. “If you don’t want to follow us, you don’t have to. We are turning east here, to follow the river, not to go against your lands. You can stand and observe, and see us turn our backs and go east.” 

“You claimed the right of every person in all Dorne to flee with you and to bring word for ships,” Edric now spoke, softly with his young age. “Our smallfolk heed you, because of the wandering Sparrows who came down from the south before the passes closed, and speak of the end of days.” 

“But you don’t?” Deria glanced away to where she could see the banners of her mother and her uncle’s troop approaching, to the long, snake-like column wending its way down between sandy hills now washed over and eroded with the heavy rains. The land itself was changing forever under the onslaught of dark power in the North. “We _pulled down Hellholt._ Is there not anything more serious?” 

“You willingly sacrificed it to kill a Dragon not that long ago. Normally Uller madness is dangerous, it’s a pity it’s just a mummer’s farce this time,” Lord Anders answered dismissively. 

“We had better decide whether or not we are going to fight,” Gerold Dayne’s voice cut supple and smooth, the mocking accent of before abruptly abandoned for graciously cold and courtly speech. “Accounting ‘Deria Uller’ but weak, Harmen’s old Castellan, Crooked Nose, is no fool and not a slouch either, he is preparing their battle lines as we speak.” 

“Wait.” Deria’s violet eyes flared. “There is no need for bloodshed no matter what. Not this much. If you want to challenge our claim, we will rescind our letters to your people if we are defeated in a trial by battle. If we are victorious, acknowledge our leadership and follow us to Planky Town. My Uncle and Mother will try to negotiate when they come, but if they cannot convince you, then we can at least settle it without a battle, and _especially_ a battle starting now.” 

“They won’t abandon their flight across the sea for anything, just like I told you. They’re infected with Ellaria’s cowardice, it just took longer,” Gerold remarked in bemusement, but his calculating eyes seemed to tell Deria a different story. 

“I don’t care about Oberyn’s old whore,” Anders remarked, distracted by Darkstar’s words. The Yronwoods had never accepted Ellaria’s _coup._

But Edric Dayne raised a hand. “No, it is fair. We cannot afford any bloodshed, even if they intend to spare it only to run. At least our own forces will not be weakened. Lady Deria,” he offered more charitably, with a smile on his boyish face, though it was a smile behind which a thought lurked, “we will agree—if, and only if, it is clear what kind of trial it is. This is a matter of the Faith, of Westeros, of being Seveners, and it is clear that your mother is impious before the Gods we adopted, keeping the Rhoynish Faith and Tongue, like she was an Orphan of the Greenblood herself. So we will put this to the question: A trial by Seven, and your mother must be among their number. If she is so confident, let her challenge the will of the Gods herself.” 

Deria was confronted with the very obvious fact that she really had no right to commit her mother to anything of the sort. Deria also remembered what her instructions were. 

“Fairly met. If the talks fail, it will be settled by a Trial of Seven.” 


	3. Cold Iron

The moment that Jeyanka arrived, she rode straight up to her daughter with Harmen at her side. “You kept them from attacking us, Good,” she said peremptorily. It was a gesture of confidence, especially for her cousin, before she asked the next question. “What did you agree to in return, daughter?”

“If they do not agree with your proposals to cross the Narrow Sea to the Rhoyne, then, we will have to fight them in a Trial of Seven,” Deria answered, flushed as she explained, but keeping her courage before her mother to not soften the blow. “We will withdraw the letters and refuse their smallfolk if they are victorious.”

“But we may still cross the sea ourselves.”

“Yes,” Deria answered. “I have no desire to be one of the blue-eyed dead, Mother!”

“Calm yourself, child,” Jeyanka waved her hand idly, and swung her horse around to face her cousins. “A Trial of Seven. To test the Witch of the Vaith against the Gods of this dying land—Heh. Heh. Not even that. The Gods of Andalos. That’s how we shall approach it. The Gods of Andalos! ARE NOT THE SEVEN THE GODS OF ANDALOS!?” She pitched her voice to a sharp declaration rolling through their troupe. It could not be denied, except by the ignorant, for it was absolutely true.

Deria, flushing, swung her own horse back to Crooked Nose, who by that time had turned out the Battles and had all in readiness. “Are you comfortable with that? I know you are devout.”

“Best to be devout about himself,” he said, staring at Deria. “Aye, I think you worship the Mother, and call her something else, and do disservice to your own souls by it, M’lady,” he admitted frankly, “but aye, Lady Jeyanka is right too. The Seven are Gods of Essos, and if evil comes against us too strong to face, then let us sail back to their land and honour them there. That is how I see the lay of it. I will follow the House of Uller whatever its Gods be, too; I don’t care if my liege-lord keeps a Turtle or a Seven-Pointed Star as long as my own heart is free. You’ve walked your own strange path, Lady Deria, and I wouldn’t begrudge it to you.”

“Thank you, Crooked Nose.” She swung her horse back around toward her mother and her kinsmen. “Mother, let me ride back forward with you, and I will draw my sword for…”

“By the rotten red dust!” Jeyanka looked viciously annoyed. “There’s only two of us with enough training to matter here. We are not both fighting, come to it. You will stay back with Lord Harmen…”

“Cousin, I am _not_ staying out of this!”

“Yes you are,” she answered hotly. “Many people outside of the Orphans will not follow Deria, and you are an old man, and if we are to be friends with the Dragon, then having Ellaria’s father alive and on the Rhoyne is by far the best plan. I will fight, your brother will fight, and your son will fight. Crooked Nose will fight. And we will find three Knights of substance in our ranks. But you and Deria must lead us if I fall.” 

“Damn you all for your sense, woman,” Harmen snarled, but conceded.

Jeyanka smiled and with a flick of her reins brought her horse around. “Let’s go see these men, cousin. Forward the honour guard!” With trumpets and drums and banners and a guard of picked knights, the two Uller brothers and Jeyanka  and Harmen’s eldest son rode together forward with Crooked Nose following behind. 

The Daynes and Yronwoods and their allies returned to meet them in the midst of the muddy yellow stream. They, too, had sorted out to have their best knights in their guard, to mark the men who would fight in the Trial of Seven, if it came to it. 

“Lord Harmen,” Edric Dayne greeted them as their horses wetted their legs in the muddy water and reined in. “Your cousin has created a deal of fuss for all of Dorne. You seem to have gone along with it.” 

“She has, and I have gone along with it,” Harmen agreed with a flat, curt tone. “But Lord Edric, Lady Jeyanka can explain it for herself.”

“So she can,” Edric acknowledged. “Lady Jeyanka? Do you stand by all of the claims that you have spread through all of Dorne?”

“I do, Lord Edric,” Jeyanka shrugged and looked down at the pommel of the saddle, gripped in her gloved hands. “You see,” she said mildly, “I can feel him coming down against us.”

“You speak like you know the monster personally, whereas the Ravens speak only in whispers, Lady Jeyanka,” the young Lord Edric’s steed pranced in the water. “Praytell what do we face which fills Uller with enough dread to destroy their own keep?”

Jeyanka looked down at the water, and Lord Anders glared from a few paces beyond. “Our people sit uneasily on this land. It was not our land; I think Sothyros or even Ulthos was our native land, or as some of the most ancient and twisted legends say, we came from even further, with Great Old Ones directing us. Perhaps the Lengii know more, but I have yet to peruse what archives they keep. The Children of the Forest were here before us…”

“ _The Children of the Forest?”_ Anders laughed. “I’m supposed to sit on my horse in the afternoon sun and listen to _this_ at a parley?!”

“Witches are subtle and quick to anger,” Jeyanka warned in a low voice as her heterochrome eyes flashed and an electric tension seemed to rise up from the stream below. Her daughter was a witch, too; she had chosen the place for the parley very well.

It was Darkstar, of all of them, who looked down at the water and frowned, before addressing her. “Do go on, Lady Jeyanka.” His gesture brought a sudden, nervous awareness to the group of Daynes and Yronwoods about just how vulnerable they might be.

“And the First Men drove them out,” Jeyanka continued after a moment, unruffled by the tense interjection. “And the First Men came from Essos, just like the Andals would, the Rhoynish … The Valyrians. This land has been subjected from the east for thousands of years. What comes from the North is relation of those first inhabitants, some children of the Ice, which has always lived there, and now comes to reclaim the west. The wall’s breached, the Guard was inadequate, they have the power to raise our dead, to extend life-beyond-life. Every cemetery will make them stronger. By the time they reach Dorne, their Armies will blot out the ground like a swarm of locusts from Hell. Even if you had weapons which could hurt them, there would be a hundred of them for every man on the passes of the Red Mountains, and by then, the snow will cover our deserts and our rivers will begin to freeze. The dead behind us will erupt from the ground to render the positions of the few untenable.” 

Edric looked at her for a long while. He said nothing. Anders folded his arms. He was clearly unconvinced. It was Darkstar who spoke again. 

“Very well, Lady Jeyanka. And if that’s what’s coming against us, why will the Narrow Sea help? This monstrous host will just wait for it to freeze solid and then walk across, from Stepstone to Stepstone. How shall being in Essos save us?” 

Jeyanka smiled, faintly. “When water freezes, it excludes the element of salt into channels, so that the ice is fresh.” 

In that moment, Harmen, at least, had an answer for the question, and it made sense of a comment which before his cousin had made, declaring that as the Night’s King marched further south, she would become stronger. Indeed, the whole of Dorne would be covered by a blanket of frozen  _ fresh water,  _ and it was in this her magic was founded, and indeed, as the sea was frozen, it would become calm, and it would become fresh on the surface, and by this, she might even be able to make way in her ships through it, using her magic to clear a path for their fleet. 

“Also, the Dragon is over there, Ellaria is at her court, as one of her advisors, with all of her daughters and all of Oberyn’s daughters,” Jeyanka continued conversationally. “The dragons will reinforce a great host, and the Night’s King’s Army is a wasting asset. Eventually, the dead work themselves to pieces. Marching when you’re dead is very hard, you know. So, we are going to Essos. And you can come with us, and be accepted as Lords of the Rhoyne, and raise manors on the bones of the manors of our Ancestors, and we will make cities again, and our language too. But if you want to worship the Gods of Andalos—it is right there, in Essos, too, just to the northwest. Worship the Gods of Andalos. Our Mother has tolerated our straying for a thousand years, but still my magic waxes in the hour of need. I am sure she will tolerate your choice, and if you really cannot bear to live on the Rhoyne, Andalos is there, you can conquer it from Pentos with your Andal manhood and courage and your swords. I will not begrudge it to you. Perhaps the Gods are calling you home too, and if only the High Sparrow had listened instead of playing politics with the Lion-bitch in King’s Landing, he would have heard the trumpet sound.”

As she spoke, two will-o-wisps had formed down the creek on either side, and they steadily turned into water-funnels. The water-funnels rose higher and higher, spinning like tornadoes until they had sucked the water from the creek, ugly brown with mud and twisted yellow with silt, banded like paintings running off the hills, and the creek went down toward dry. Men in the ranks across the river, in the rows of cottonwood trees, cried in surprise and fear.

The Lords facing them tensed terribly as the water sank away from around the hooves of their horses. “What I am Ser, is no liar, Ser,” Jeyanka said coldly. “They are coming.  _ They are coming. _ ” 

Lord Anders pushed his horse forward. “Enough of this! What it comes down, plainly, is that Lord Harmen, we know better. You put your bastard daughter on the throne of Dorne and _humiliated_ us all. If the Nymeros-Martell hath fallen, then it is Yronwood’s right! We have the blood of Nymeria too, and we have always been rightfully Royal. Now you would command us all to follow your mad witch of a cousin across the sea, and hide behind her when we confront you over this plain fact!”

“Thrones are held by cold iron,” Harmen answered, his voice and body alike tensing. “You can fight for it, or you can follow us. But if we reach Essos you will be a free man to do as you like with your family and your men-at-arms and your smallfolk. I will not ask you to bend the knee to myself, or to Ellaria.”

“Or to the Dragon? She will demand our submission!”

“Or to the Dragon,” Harmen agreed, and spat. “She is our blood, though, and we will be bonded, as blood to blood. Do not dare insult it, Lord Anders.”

“You insult me, Ser! You would steal all that we have, and your schemes have usurped the leadership of our people! Come, men, let us have our trial of Seven!”

“It was offered to me,” Lord Edric answered, curtly. He was young, but he found his strength in that moment. “I will not compel it. We Daynes came here from Essos to find a falling star. We found it and forged the Sword of the Morning. Our eyes hue the same colour as those of old Valyria. We will return to Essos, and regret nothing. We will follow the Seven in Essos, and if a new Sword of the Morning wishes to liberate Andalos, we will in time take the Lady Jeyanka’s offer in good faith. I did not come here to fight for your ambition, I came here to fight for our rights, for our people, and I am satisfied it is best we follow the witch.” He looked wearily at the spinning columns of water. “Your magic indeed waxes, Lady Jeyanka. I will take my risks with the sea as your friend and ally, as we are all Dornish, and men and women of House Dayne and House Uller have fought for our freedom and bare survival before.”

Jeyanka released the water, which plunged down in tremendous eruptions of mud and spray, the furthest, lightest spray raining down steadily upon them. She did not mind it, and indeed, seemed to relish it.

“And I will not, Lord Edric,” Anders roared. “To arms, Lord Harmen! If there will be no duel of the Seven, then there will be a duel of _two._ I declaim that you have no right in your family to lead Dorne! I declaim it, Lord Harmen! I declaim it!”

“Then to your Sword, man.” He swung down from the saddle into the muddy creek. 

“I need you alive, cousin!” Jeyanka exclaimed, and swung down from her own horse to throw a gloved hand out to Harmen’s shoulder. 

“No, Lady Jeyanka,” Crooked Nose had quietly dismounted and splashed in the mud, and extended his sword to put a barrier between her and Lord Harmen. “By the Gods, they must do this. They must fight.” 

Lord Harmen pulled the clasp on his cape and handed it off to his brother while he reached down and loosened his sword in the scabbard, but didn’t draw it yet. “Come on, you don’t think my daughter should be the Prince? Then get down from your horse, man, and draw your sword. I will tell you this. If I fall, you will lead the Dornish to the Rhoyne and be our Prince, and if you fall, I will lead to the Dornish to the Rhoyne, but so help me by the Mother…”

At that, Jeyanka’s eyes flashed wide with hope, and she stepped back from Crooked Nose’s blade. 

“...If we are going to fight today, we will go to the Rhoyne,” Lord Harmen finished. Then he looked up to the other Lords and Knights still on horseback. “Off your horses, men, swear it! Swear it that you will go to Essos, be it under our leadership or Lord Yronwood’s! Make a knightly oath!” 

For a moment Lord Edric hesitated. Then he swung out of the saddle and drew his sword. “Come on my Lords and Knights, swear!” The rain began to lash at them again from an angry sky, but it stopped no-one now.  The other knights and Lords were dismounting, even a reluctantly smirking Darkstar, and they all drew their swords. 

“I swear before The Father, The Mother, The Warrior, The Smith, The Maiden, The Crone and The Stranger, and I swear upon the Seven-Pointed Star, and I swear upon the Sword, that I shall honour the result of this duel, and by victory we will follow the Ullers, and by victory we will follow the Yronwoods, but either way we are going to Essos. Do you so swear, men?” 

“We swear, on the Seven Pointed Star! We swear, on our swords!” 

Quietly, Lord Anders finally got off his horse, and unclasped his cloak, and handed it back to one of his sworn shields, and broke the tension on his sword so that it sat lightly in the scabbard. Now he faced Lord Harmen, man to man, with the rain pounding down. 

“Do you want to wait for the rain to end again?” Lord Harmen asked. 

“No, Lord Harmen, we will fight in the rain,” the Bloodroyal answered. “But all of your Knights and kinsmen and men of quality and Lady Jeyanka too will swear an oath to follow me if I am victorious, too.” 

“Come on, come forward now, swear! Swear you will accept the Bloodroyal as Prince and follow him, if he defeats me!” Lord Harmen waved. A great knot of men was now gathered around, and some swore to the Seven, led by Crooked Nose, and some swore to the Mother Rhoyne, led by Jeyanka, as the two men stalked each other, until they found dry ground between the rivulets of the creek, big enough for them to fight on, with a great mass standing in the mud and water and forming a circle around them.

“It’s sworn,” Lord Harmen declared as the rolling words fell away, men holding their bare swords, with steel wet in the rain. “Stand your ground!”

Lord Anders drew his sword and assumed a fighting stance. “Stand your ground, Uller!”

Lord Harmen drew his sword and reprised the position. “It’s a pity to die in the rain.”

“It’s you who will have your corpse in the rain, and your Mother will carry you to the sea, Uller,” Anders spat, and then advanced on the attack. Their blades crossed and crossed again, sharp and hard. Dornish duelling with the traditional Dornish scimitar was not like the knightly duelling of Westeros. The men fought with one hand to the back, turned to the side, advancing, their blades waving through the rain like flashes of shimmering light in the gloom. The heavy blades, meant to take the blow of a longsword from a Westerosi opponent, able to thrust but better for slashing, clinked again and again in the heavy rain.

T hey circled and cut at each other again, blades waving in exaggerated motions which no broadsword would match. As quick as the wind, Lord Harmen spun to the side as Lord Anders circled him, and his age belied his speed with the appropriate repositioning lunge, and again their blades clashed, and clashed again. 

“You swing that blade like a flail, Ser!” Harmen mocked Anders as he snapped another parry against a cut, and then presented his sword in the long-stance, extended forward to the limit of his arm to temporarily halt Anders’ advance. For a moment, Anders tried to break through, to knock Harmen’s blade aside, but Harmen relaxed his position and resumed it with each slash, avoiding the contact of the blades with a subtle motion. Then Anders fell back and accepted the pause for what it was.

Harmen fell back to his guard. The pause was a short one. “Stand your ground!” He shouted, inviting Anders to resume the attack. The Yronwood Lord carried forward with his blade flashing in the rain, and the ring of metal again crashed over the course of the creek.

Lady Jeyanka watched with tense consternation. She knew it had to be done, she understood well why they were fighting. The Yronwood had always been too close to Andal customs, too far from the traditions of the Rhoyne. But if Lord Harmen died and it was Lord Anders who would lead them, she feared for her daughter. And the Orphans would not follow a Dornish Lord who still worshipped the Seven, unless by her constant intervention. _And what would the Dragonqueen say?_

But in a moment of perfect energy, Lord Harmen recovered from a low guard to a high strike as Anders inadvertently obliged him and gave him the power for a counter-stroke. He hammered Lord Anders’ blade from his hand, and it spun away ‘till the tip buried in the mud.

 _Oh Merciful Mother…_ Jeyanka cursed silently.

“Pick it up!” Lord Harmen cried. 

Lady Jeyanka’s face blanched and she turned red with anger.  _You foolish, foolish man_ ! 

Deria tried to ride up, still a-horse, through the knot of men. “Mother, but you’ve won!” she cried. “Don’t do it!” But Crooked Nose was there, and he grabbed her horse’s halter so hard the sand steed nearly threw her, rearing up in his firm grip. 

“No,” he said harshly, “Don’t interfere!” 

“Pick it up!” Lord Harmen repeated with a gesture of the tip of his blade. Around them, the men were grinning and cheering. It was a knightly gesture of the kind which won over armies and foes. It was a risk, but the kind of calculated one which made whole the outcome of a dispute. Even Lord Edric was smiling with approval. 

Lord Anders stepped over and snatched his blade from the mud.

“Stand your ground!” Lord Harmen bellowed. Now he had the advantage, and he knew it. The moment that Lord Anders fell back into a fighting stance, he went over to the attack for the first time. The clang of the blades was flashing through a gap of light in the clouds as the rain eased. For the moment, Lord Anders held his own as Lord Harmen got the measure of his opponent on the defensive and felt out his own attack.

When for a moment the Yronwood Lord drove his opponent down to the muddy waters with a quick set of counterstrokes, the Yronwoods roared with approval, and it looked like Lord Anders might regain the momentum of the duel. But Lord Harmen braced himself with a gloved fist in the rock and mud, and drove back furiously with his blade, lunging up without being driven fully to ground.

Lord Anders’ attempt to _force_ the offensive was paid for, hard. A flash of his blade upwards as Lord Harmen gained his footing, and suddenly Lord Anders’ scimitar was shoved far out of position, and Lord Harmen drew back and drove his point forward before his rival could recover. Abruptly, it was over, as the point of the blade drove into Lord Anders’ upper chest.

A great groan fell from the lips of his men, and Lord Harmen pulled his blade back as his opponent toppled down, face first into the mud, with blood washing slowly from the tip of his sword in the rain. “He is wounded! Lady Jeyanka, kinswoman, show him mercy!” Lord Harmen shouted and turned to face the Yronwood men. “The Gods have spoken, Sers! Prince Ellaria’s honour is defended!” There was a sharp silence now across the field.

Jeyanka turned to her daughter. “You do it! It’s your chance to win respect from them Deria, you treat him.”

With a grimace and a nod, the woman snapped her reins, and Crooked Nose let her through, while Lord Edric approached Lord Harmen, and made a short, polite bow. The blood was already gone from the tip of his blade, washed clean in the rain.


	4. The Junction of the Waters

Chapter Four

The retainers of Yronwood came, and the Daynes came, and the houses allied with them, until the banks of the muddy yellow creek were choked with people, and it had become an impromptu city, and all the trees were chopped down. It was then, as the cold rains continued, that they finally began to march on to the east. Lady Jeyanka watched the skies carefully, waiting for the first snow. When the snow began in Dorne, she would know it was not long, and they needed to make haste.

In the streams and over the hills, through the thin stands of trees which grew on the banks, virtually the only trees in central Dorne (the northeast coast had more, where the lemons grew), the water flowed and flowed, muddy yellow and brown slowly coming together to be clear. Each night, barefoot, Jeyanka and her daughter went down to the river, and splashed into the bank, and staring into it, muttered things that made Harmen uncomfortable, and perhaps gained some inkling of what this mysterious enemy they faced was doing, what his progress was, how much longer it would be until he crossed the Red Mountains.

T hey descended from the headwaters of the Scourge until they reached the confluence with the Vaith, the beginning of the Greenblood, by land. They dragged timber along, felling more as they marched, and by Jeyanka’s orders, burned dung for fuel, that every scrap of good timber might be hoarded, and sent flowing down the Scourge,  until they became a great shambolic mass, of horses, carts, wagons, wheelhouses, people walking, people dragging things, and clothes growing more ragged from the march under the heavy rains. 

All of the effort was dedicated t oward this moment, the moment when they hove into sight of the confluence  of the Vaith and the Scourge into the Greenblood , and saw a vast array of riverine craft, of boats and barges, all gathered together, with countless floating logs lashed into rafts around them.  The cliffs plunged down, the light shadowed through the clouds  in piercing beams which illuminated, and concealed, some parts of the flotilla before them. Behind them, the great groaning throng of humanity felt a surge of hope at their nearness to river transport, and end to the toil of the road. 

Since days long past when she had come to visit before her own mother passed beyond, Harmen had not seen Jeyanka quite so happy as she was then, riding her horse down to the water and splashing about in the confluence of the rivers, fearless of the water despite the cold weather. Small boats surged around her, and Harmen knew that these were the Orphans, coming to see the last Witch of the Water, the last Witch of the Rhoyne.

Not quite last. Deria caught up to her mother, and was showered with the same welcome, the booming drums and the women of the boats splashing into the water to receive their blessing, before Jeyanka, riding her horse into the water, splashing water on those who descended around her, was hauled up by some strong men into one of the barge-boats that seemed to have a house on it.  Despite the cold, none of them seemed to mind being wet, though ready hands conveyed Jeyanka to the fire, lined with bricks, and supplied her with blankets.

Deria, though, turned back, shaking herself off as she rode from water to land, and headed back up to Harmen. “Keep drawing everyone up into camp here tonight, along the Vaith side, please, so the effluent is carried past the fleet. We will begin embarking tomorrow after my Lady Mother Jeyanka has held council with the boatmen.”

The setting sun painted the cliffs orange and red, and the sky in hues of red and purple, over the bluffs they had descended. The grass along the shore rippled, and one’s eyes could follow the scrub and creosote bush up the slope until they disappeared into the sand. They would not see this place again, that was the last sight of it that Harmen would have. Deria, too, and her mother. He looked to her and nodded. “We will set camp on land one last time, then.”

“Except Planky Town, we’ll have to break down the town for wood to build boats,” Deria nodded, with her violet eyes bright, her curly dark hair lashed behind her. “Thank you, My Lord Uncle,” she added more softly. “I do not think it is clear how privately thankful my Mother is, that we Ullers are all in this together.”

“Ullers first and foremost.” He looked at Deria significantly. “All of us. You included, lass.”

“Thank you. I’m going to go form up with the rear-guard.”

“Without drying off first? You’ll catch cold.”

“Seeing the Orphans makes my blood hot, My Lord Uncle!”

“Enough of that,” Harmen shrugged off his own cloak and tossed it to her. “I’ll have a fire soon enough. Don’t be a fool.”

She laughed, accepted it, and merrily tore away on her Sand steed, while behind them the sound of celebratory music spread from the fleet. The fires issued smoke to cook fish and cattails and the goods of the shore from; the lamps would come up when the sun finished going down, while the wet and bedraggled enormous column, as large as any Army mustered in Westeros, descended through the bluffs around them, and set camp.

On the boats, the heads of households crossed from deck to deck, lashed together for stability and to share the strength of their anchors and ropes ashore in the heavier than normal currents. They came to the large house-barge, with its curved prow and low amidship roofed hall and two-storey high cabin aft. They packed the hall until it was full to the standing, except for the space around the hearth and the Water Witch, where distance was respectfully maintained. For the Orphans, Jeyanka reached a long and heavy walking stick into the fire, smudged the tip with ash, and began to draw in strokes of grey on the clean deck, the details of her plan of her action.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next day, the boats that were pushed up onto the muddy beach loomed by the hundreds. It was raining, and it seemed as if the rivers had risen yet more, but perhaps it was only a trick of the imagination. The Lords of the various houses were assembled before Harmen. “We have mustered the finest ships to hold at reserve for the Lords and their households,” he explained. “But we will host the standards of each Lordship to various vessels, and by this, command the people to sort to the boats holding the standard of their House. Each group, when loaded, will depart for Planky Town, and we ask the Lords to keep their troops ashore to guard the landing stage until the last ships are ready to depart.”

Lord Anders and Lord Edric came up to Harmen after he finished giving his instructions, leaving lesser lords behind to return to their hosts. Lord Anders had a wary look around the man who had bested him in a duel only a few weeks prior, and it was Lord Edric who did the talking. “We have come to the Greenblood, and the river-boats are here where they were promised; we will sail to Planky Town. But while we load, and with no-one around to molest us, we would rather hear more from Lady Jeyanka her plan. It would behove her to treat with us as equals.”

“A ship at sea can only have one Captain, and a fleet one Admiral,” Harmen answered, but then shrugged. “Truth be told, it will be productive for all of us. Come on.” He led them down into the great hall. With the morning, Jeyanka had bathed in the river, anointed herself in oil afterwards, and was drying her hair by the fire while a cast-iron cooking grill was in front of her, fish sizzling on it from the coals that it held within and protected the wooden hull of the barge from contact with. The management of fire aboard ship was something that everyone had to be mindful of and that could never stop, but between brick and iron, the Orphans were well accustomed to it.

With the slats in the side of the hall pulled down for the morning like, they could see her clearly enough, her hair wrapped with a great length of fabric, and her heterochrome eyes following the three men with a look of measured intelligence.

They sat, of course. She was a woman of quality, that much was accepted, and did not have to rise for them. But nor would any of them treat her as elevated above their own station. The Ullers had married the Nymeros-Martell, but so had all of their families, and truth be told, even Harmen was sometimes goaded by the position of leadership that Jeyanka had casually assumed.

“Lady Jeyanka,” Edric began, trying, in his youth, to be as disarming as he could. “We wished to discuss with you the plan that you have. Oh, we have the particulars. We will take the wood, and dismantle the boats of the river and Planky Town, and use it to build ships. Sail for the Rhoyne. Yes, you made that clear, and if the Seven bless us, it may even work.” Even he couldn’t resist the slight dig, though. “However, this will take time, and they say the Narrow Seas are too rough for a direct crossing. Will you not share with us the plan that you hold for our passage?”

Jeyanka took the fish on a stick from the grill, dipped it in a little clay pot of sauce, and ate it whole. She gestured to the grill. “Be my guests, take the fruits of the river.” Then she took another fish, as a serving girl put several more on the grill in their place.

“Our enemy calls forth Northerly winds against us. In the North, it’s too cold now for anyone to be left alive. In the south, the full Narrow Sea has been traversed by those winds—the ‘fetch’ of the winds has collected the waves into great masses, as the mariners say, so there is no real chance to cross directly to the east from here, you are right. However…” She reached to the bench behind her, and carefully brought up a massive, heavy, leather-bossed volume of a book, with the title in a strange script.

There were a few murmurs. The men knew, without a doubt, they were looking at a book written in Old Rhoynish. “What is the lay of what you hold, Lady Jeyanka?”

“The navigational record of Nymeria’s fleet,” Jeyanka answered. “There is also a narrative record by her fleet navigator. He kept very good notes. I will, of course, commission us a Fleet Navigator in the same style, and I have been working on translations into Valyrian and Westerosi. I don’t pretend to be an experienced sailor myself, I will not jape with you gentlemen. We will need every one of them to lead us. But the books make clear that there is a solution. We must sail _southwest_ from the mouth of the Greenblood, hug the coast of Dorne, and then turn due south, for the Summer Islands. That way, there is no long fetch of the wind to drive the seas to a frenzy, for the wind has spent its fury on the land instead. Many could have escaped this way, were it not for the want of ports on that rocky, iron-bound coast. But there are no ports, and so here we are, and perhaps the Arbor… Perhaps the Arbor has a chance. He should not, by rights, be able to cross the water.”

“Our enemy.” Edric regarded her carefully, without meeting directly the eyes of the witch. “How much do you know of him? Still we fly from a foe we do not know the mettle of. Do not be cryptic with me, Lady Jeyanka, be level, of we are for your cause now, we have sworn to Lord Harmen, but we must know the enemy we face.”

“He is a power,” Jeyanka slowly shook her head, setting the books aside. “My foremothers knew that something was wrong with this land. It is not our’s by right, and I do not mean the Rhoynar, I mean Man generally. There were once older powers in it, the ones in the forests. The legends of the earliest time, when the arm was broken and created all that we know of this world.” She held up her hand to forestall them. “Having accepted that I am not a liar, or mad, please trust when I repeat these old myths, that they are less myths than you should like.”

“Go on,” Lord Anders finally murmured, though his eyes were drenched in suspicion.

Jeyanka still took it as a favourable point. “They have concentrated all their power and spirits into a game of bringing forth death against us—and came to regret it. This beast of the North is but one of many faces this old power has held, corrupting the living and raising the dead since the Long Night. He seeks to freeze the whole land into ice, for his creators, who loved the green lands, no longer have the power to control him. The tried to stop him with another creation of Man, they have before. But this time… Their power fades, their day is truly done. He will win. Still… We have more time than it may seen, I have been scrying, and something interesting will come.”

“Our chance for survival?” Anders’ eyes narrowed, “Comes down to scrying-boards?”

“It’s better than none at all, and at this point, at least some of us will escape. The advantage of the sea is that we can simply wait until he is upon us to sail forth upon it, and at once be safe,” she answered tartly. “At any rate, we have an advantage. As ice forms, the fetch of the sea decreases, and paradoxically, the water will become calmer. So far, it hasn’t happened yet, and I’m still trying to understand why—but that gives us two chances to leave, one which I have foreseen, and one which the Navigator in these old books assures to me will happen. Two chances is better than one. We must prepare on the assumption at least one of them will come to pass.”

“But it has not happened yet?” Even Harmen was suspicious of that.

“Yes, I mean, not that the sea has not become calm, rather, than the Narrow Sea _isn’t freezing_ as it ought. The last word we got suggested the coast of Essos even around Braavos remains open. But the lagoons should be freezing. Interesting, that.” She looked back to the grill. “We will have some months. Plan on it, but pray. One way or another, I will trust that all our prayers will get to the same place. I haven’t the time for petty quarrels about faith, I will welcome all the heirs of the Rhoyne no matter the Gods they hold now.” Her smile, as she looked up, was thin. 

“If we must sail south, does that not mean?” Edric hesitated, knowing his experience was not in maritime affairs, “That we should… Retrace the route of the fleet, in fact? Of Nymeria’s fleet?”

“It does. Perhaps that will even be lucky. We will need it.” 


	5. Chapter Five: The River of No Return

Chapter Five: The River of No Return

The fleet descended the Greenblood in great masses of every kind of boat, raft, and barge. They had cookfires on their decks, lanterns for light in their deckhouses. The river was small, and shallow, but gentle enough for them, and navigable throughout, and so the Orphans carried on, with their guests and refugees. The rain and the wind produced some trouble, but it was nothing like the open sea.

On these decks, many noblemen and noblewomen of Dorne who had not already fled were gathered, their servants trying to provide for them a crude approximation of comfort in the deckhouses. They were adapting to much reduced circumstances from their halls, but for the moment in the high deckhouses of this river-barges, they could manage some kind of dignity.

Deria commanded the small squadron of galliots which patrolled the great flotilla, flitting from boat to boat, her lithe fifty-oared galliot bearing the flag of an Admiralanta, while the Capitana-General’s flag fluttered from the great barge that her mother travelled on with the other Ullers. The galliot crews put their backs into freeing barges and rafts which were caught and grounded on sandbanks and corralling to stay travelling down the main channel. Deria stayed away from the other noble girls of her age, but was quite popular amongst the smallfolk by the time the journey was done.

On the great barge where Jeyanka Uller hung her flag, the woman was frequently found in the barge’s main cabin before the fire, with a blanket wrapped around her. A dweller of the deep desert, she endured stoically, but the current circumstances were certainly making her cold despite her best efforts. She spent most of her time with a scrying-board in front of her, bouncing bones across it, and pouring the blood of animals into a small stone bowl set in front of her. It was unsettling to her cousins, though they nonetheless had the idea that, in snippets and hints of vision, she was seeing something of the Power to the North inside of her scrying-board.

Lord Harmen left her to it, thinking it was surely important, and besides, it left him with more authority over the fleet. The sense of purpose that gave him was very important, when they had abandoned everything that his honour was tied to. The ruins of Hellholt would moulder forever, and who knew if it would even be a desert that claimed them. He found his niece Deria to be willing to obey, though clearly being raised to follow her mother, she was quick with her tongue and willing to speak her counsel as few were. He appreciated her work with the galliots, but it was clearly, too, a bit of propaganda; Jeyanka wanted to raise her daughter’s stature by having her constantly among the people. The Orphans would trust them automatically, knowing that she was the water witch and the water witch’s daughter. The others would have to be won over, and despite its customs, Dorne was in fact devout.

Now if only he could see what she saw in her scrying-board. He was sure his heart would be less ill-at-ease if he could have a glimpse of the enemy so terrible that he could only flee from it, only protect his nation by carrying it away into exile.

His thoughts were lost by what sounded like a rolling laugh in a woman’s voice that came from the main hall. He recognised his cousin’s voice, but still he made haste across the wooden decks and ducking through the passages to come to her side. Even by the standards that he had been raised to expect from the women around him, no shirking violets of the rest of Westeros, Jeyanka was something else, but she was still his cousin, and he still had an obligation to her, all the greater for her importance to them at the moment.

But it _was_ a laugh, it turned out. Raising a bowl of wine to her lips, she was grinning in her eyes as Harmen came to a halt, standing before her. “We have plenty of time now. Oh, do we have plenty of time now. He has taken a blow that the world will never appreciate.”

“If you know it, why won’t you speak it?”

“I know the effects, I understand the consequences, but it’s not so easy as that… Come down here,” she rapped her knuckles sharply on the wood of the deck.

Though it didn’t speak of his dignity to sit on the floor, he did, his sword awkwardly clattering in the scabbard up the deck as he did. His cousin reached out and clattered a bone across the scrying board, and extended long and bony fingers toward his eyes. “Close them,” she instructed softly.

He did as she demanded, and then Jeyanka reached out to lightly touch his closed eyes.

Suddenly he was not there, but elsewhere. In a dizzying rush of his mind, he could see King’s Landing in the snow, disappearing in flame, somewhere between a vision of real life and print-blocks in a mummer’s farce, a vision of not-quite-reality, which nonetheless felt completely real.

The Army of the Dead turned to cinders, as a host with dimly glowing blue eyes melted away, and in rage, outside the walls, the remainder could only watch as their power over this land, at least for a brief while, disappeared.

The vision flashed away, leaving Harmen staggering, putting his hand down on the deck of the barge below to steady himself. He felt cold, as if he had been there, despite the comic-opera definition of the vision, it still felt real. He could not ignore the sense that it had really just happened. “Why… Why do you think the city burned?” He struggled for the words.

She shrugged. “They say Visenya Targaryen was the architect long ago, and she was the last Valyrian Storm Singer and the last Blood-Witch of Old Valyria—unless the rumours from my namesake’s age are right… Perhaps she lay magic into the city, to deny it to these monsters, when she built it, and her son drenched the brick of the Red Keep in the blood of sacrifices.”

“How much do you know about the old Targaryens?” Harmen changed the subject, feeling out of his element on the floor by the brick, the fire, in the middle of the hall on a ship, the smokey brass chimney rising above, the lamps flickering around the sides. Fire was a dangerous thing on a ship, but it was needed for life, and so it was here.

“What the Lady Jeyanka learned from the Queen,” she answered. “But, my namesake also spied on the Targaryen in those days, at the behest of Princess Deria, by every means that she could, sparing absolutely nothing for the cause.”

“What are the rumours you spoke of, then?”

“Oh, just same tale that Tyanna really had a child but they were cursed not to take the throne,” Jeyanka waved her hand idly. “No relevance to the mists of history, except for the heritage of Valyrian blood magic and Storm Singers, but it’s all lost to the ages now. Regardless of the cause, King’s Landing burned, and it rendered a fierce blow to our enemy. He is weak.”

“If this is an unexpected blow…”

“It is,” Jeyanka said, hunching over and looking at the fire. 

“...Could we fight? Could we in fact face him, now, my cousin?” 

“Why did I know you were going to say that?” She looked side-eyed at her cousin, and shook her head. “Maybe, if we could magically transport every soldier still in the realms straight to King’s Landing to face him, if I could access my power in the Blackwater… No, I don’t think even then. There’s only one place in all these lands of Westeros beyond the islands in the sea which will keep him out.” She paused. “We know so little, even my line knows so little. The last Water Witches, but our knowledge of the past is fragmentary, and we travelled little, precisely to safeguard our power. Before my grandmother died, when I was just in training, in the hidden city, I was allowed to go out incognito, to travel the realms with a bard’s company. The God’s Eye – it will not freeze. The Green Men on the Isle in the Centre, they will be safe with their trees, safe and warm. I imagine some families may escape there… But if they grow numerous enough to chop down the trees, they will lose their protection, and in the end the doom will come across them too. I don’t know if the islands will be safe. You would think the Arbor, with all of her ships and so far from the coast, might be. But perhaps the ice will spread… Only fire will keep you safe from this creature, and you see, there is a fire, deep in the Earth, below the God’s Eye… And there is another fire protecting Dragonstone. But I don’t know how to kill him, cousin. I don’t know how to kill him. I could only _try,_ and I might well fail. He can turn my magic in a way that fire cannot be turned. I never got to the wall… Such a shame, perhaps I might have seen something if I had.”

“It’s all for naught now, it’s truly all for naught now,” Harmen shook his head. He began to see the ferocious intensity and certainty of his cousin that had driven them this far. “Except for the ships.”

“Except for the ships,” Jeyanka laughed. “We’ll have an easier time of it, now.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At length, the great armada of rafts, barges and boats descended onto Planky Town. The city itself was a remarkable mass, nested in a cove at the mouth of the river, protected from raids by the sea but with several open channels that the locals could guide deep-water ships through. Everything floated, except for a few stone guard towers and watch towers from which warning could be signalled of approaching raiders, and from which catapults could direct fire down on vessels trying to enter the channels without permission. A few buildings lined the shore, for things best done on the land, but the better part of the town and the nearly twenty thousand inhabitants thereof were living on the mass of boats and rafts and barges which had entire houses and warehouses and shops built atop of them. Ashore was the massive, low, stone citadel which provided further protection for the agglomeration, which was the primary trading port of Dorne.

Or had been. Trading ships would never arrive here again, and there were only a few present, those which had suffered the misfortune of being trapped by the storms, and wisely chose to wait them out, rather than to challenge the fury from the north on the sea. Deria Uller, as she stood beside the pilot on the quarterdeck of her lead galliot, grinned when she saw that two of them were Summer Islander Swan Ships. Their pilots and navigators would be a welcome addition when they made their breakout. 

That was to port, inside of the channel to Planky Town. To starboard, in the fading winter’s light, she could see only the dim lights of the lighthouses at the north and south capes of the river. The bar was still in a state of fury, with the waves breaking over the meandering lengths of shallow sand that marked the transition from sea to freshwater. But the weather had broken and was continuing to improve, and they held hopes that the intensity of the storms across the bar would soon subside. 

Masts struck for navigating on the river in the storm, the galliot creaked with the current, driving her downstream and keeping the men on the tiller busy as they began to turn against it, oars beating, until they reached the calm of the protected channel into Planky Town’s cove. The sky opened up a bit with the brightness of the sun,  and they passed under the towers and the watchful catapults. 

Deria had not been allowed to travel much, as the daughter of the Witch. Still, she had been to Planky Town and its culture was as close to her as any could be. Here Dornish life was closest to the Rhoynar, and furthest from Westeros. People worshipped the Seven, but they did it on boats, not in Septs arranged in a Septad—and they mingled freely with the majority, who worshipped Their Mother. 

Here, women and men carried on affairs mostly equally, and all of them armed, and the people traded the bounty of the Greenblood for their livelihood. Here, in a land of deserts and sands, they lived on the river like their ancestors had. They were the true uninhibited Dornish, in Planky Town you could find the wares of Essos and you could find those who still had a little spark of magic in them, men sometimes loved men and women sometimes women, and sometimes, the whore you hired wasn’t exactly what you expected from appearances. The food was spicy, and tempers flew over sour wine, but the music played long into the night, and nimble people danced on the wooden decks. 

In short, it was utterly Dornish.

But what Deria saw as they cleared the channel and entered the cove brought her up short. Planky Town was Planky Town, but it had utterly changed, and was rapidly disappearing, too. From every beach in the cover, drawn up around them, countless old barges being broken down, and countless new ships being knocked up. At least half the town was gone, and the harbour was filled with merchant galleys being fitted out, while more sat on the beaches. 

They had received the word  from  her mother weeks and weeks ago.  They had heeded it. For countless leagues around, they had come, with their boats from the river, or across land from the north or the south, in the scrub-lands of the Salt Dornish who lived where the sea gave them some moisture, beyond the desert. Beyond what remained of Planky Town, the Citadel was choked with people, and tents and mud hovels choked the horizon. There must be tens of thousands, or more, living rude, living rough, and living  _ in hope,  _ at the coming of all of this wood and all of these barges.

And her mother.

And her. 

Deria shuddered, and leaned her hand onto the hilt of her sword, looking out again, and smelling the camp-fires, strong enough to obscure the other, less pleasant odours of such a concentration of humanity. They had made quick progress with the ships.  _ But will there be enough room for everyone? Will we finish breaking down all of Planky Town in time?  _

And, inescapably, the reality was that once they were all here, and ‘all’ would now certainly include all the remaining nobility of Dorne, politics would again bring out the dissenters.  She would never see it again as she had in her youth, in its prime. But they could at least save the people who had made it what it was, this town on water. If they all held together. 

**Author's Note:**

> Original text of the poem:  
> Ó mar salgado, quanto do teu sal  
> São lágrimas de Portugal!  
> Por te cruzarmos, quantas mães choraram,  
> Quantos filhos em vão rezaram!  
> Quantas noivas ficaram por casar  
> Para que fosses nosso, ó mar!  
> Valeu a pena? Tudo vale a pena  
> Se a alma não é pequena.  
> Quem quer passar além do Bojador  
> Tem que passar além da dor.  
> Deus ao mar o perigo e o abismo deu,  
> Mas nele é que espelhou o céu.  
> MAR PORTUGUÊS – PESSOA.


End file.
